Regional Transportation District board members and staff members crowded into the conference room of an Owens Corning roof-shingle factory in Adams County on June 5.

They came to tour the plant on Fox Street at the border of Denver and Adams County, one of four contiguous properties on which RTD plans to build a maintenance yard for its $7 billion FasTracks rail system. But first, they heard a plea from officials at Owens Corning, the plant's owner.

"This is a critically important plant to our network and our business," said Sheree Bargabos, president of Owens Corning Roofing and Asphalt, who flew in from Toledo, Ohio, for the meeting. "There must be other sites where you wouldn't have to take out a state-of-the- art manufacturing facility."

RTD was not considering other sites. The district was looking at whether it could use a portion of Owens Corning's property without taking the factory — a solution it recently proposed to the company — but RTD officials gave no assurances at the meeting.

"We're scrambling trying to find out a way to do this," said FasTracks facilities project manager Greg Straight.

More than five years into FasTracks, RTD is still working to secure a site for its commuter rail maintenance yard, a facility that will service trains on four of the system's nine rail lines. RTD walked away from two other sites when costs rose too high and other complications arose.

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Since 2004, the estimated cost of the facility has risen from $80 million to $189 million, in large part because of escalating costs for acquiring property.

RTD's problems with the commuter rail facility show how unforeseen events and delays — some call it poor planning and execution — have helped to drive up FasTracks' costs.

"They don't think things through initially and look at all the factors. Then they put on their blinders and don't listen to anybody," said Mickey Zeppelin, who fought RTD over its plan to build its maintenance facility next to his Taxi development on Ringsby Court. "They start with bad information and then go forward from there until they get clobbered. By then, they've spent a fortune on studies and consulting fees."

Facility costs were unknown

When it proposed FasTracks in 2004, RTD did not know where the commuter rail facility would go or how much it would cost. It studied a handful of properties near the Interstate 25 and Interstate 70 junction, many of them railroad yards, and looked at adjacent market values. RTD budgeted roughly $300 million for all of its railyard land costs, according to cost documents from October 2003.

By 2007, RTD settled on a Union Pacific switching yard near the Denver Coliseum. It targeted another UP yard near York Street and East 40th Avenue for a rail station and parking.

But in January 2008, RTD walked away from talks with UP, saying the railroad's price was too high. Sources said at the time that UP wanted $700 million for the land and relocation costs.

The deal's collapse forced RTD to target properties owned by individual owners, many of which have buildings. It required the district to change alignments of its North Metro and East lines through north Denver, adding to costs.

RTD's direct expenses on the failed transaction were $21 million, most of it to reimburse UP for land it purchased to move its yard to Fort Lupton and design and engineering studies.

RTD general manager Cal Marsella said the district had no way of knowing the railroad properties would cost so much.

"When we went to the ballot in 2004, we hadn't negotiated anything with the railroads," Marsella said. "We couldn't spend the money to get the appraisals, sit down, negotiate. We couldn't get them to the table because they're saying, 'We're not going to spend a lot of our time and effort before you have the money to do anything.' "

UP spokesman Mark Davis said that is true, adding that the cost of moving the railyards was unknown at that time.

A warning to RTD

Former Colorado Department of Transportation executive director Tom Norton said he had warned Marsella about going to voters with the FasTracks plan without having nailed down railroad-related costs.

"I said I don't think you have a good handle on what it's going to cost and how you're going to do it. Cal's answer was that we have to agree to disagree, that he had a good relationship with the railroads and they would treat RTD right," Norton said.

"Dealing with the railroads is almost impossible, but you know that going in," he said.

Marsella confirmed the conversation but reiterated that RTD obtained all the information it could from the railroads before the election.

RTD's next selection for the commuter rail facility was the site of its bus maintenance center on Ringsby northeast of downtown. The plan ran into immediate resistance.

Zeppelin, whose condominium and office development was next door, objected to certain elements of the plan. He said he would've welcomed the facility if RTD would preserve land along the South Platte River and make design changes to better integrate the facility with developments in the gritty up-and-coming neighborhood.

But after months of meetings with RTD's staff and public hearings on the plan, little progress was made, he said.

In November 2008, RTD changed course again, saying it was considering other locations. The district had run into problems finding a new spot for the bus facility, would save as much as $100 million by leaving it in place and had been deterred by the cool response from neighbors, RTD officials said.

The Zeppelins have notified RTD of their intent to sue over the $650,000 they spent on studies and engineering related to the impacts of planning for the maintenance facility.

RTD worked closely with the Zeppelins and other property owners, Tonilas said.

"The reality is we worked with them more extensively than is typical for an agency to work with a stakeholder group. Our responsibility is to build a maintenance facility and to provide transit. We are not a developer," she said.

RTD soon found a third alternative, a four-parcel strip of land northwest of the Mousetrap that includes Owens Corning.

Moving the facility would be complex and expensive, company officials said. Production at the highly automated plant — the only shingle factory in Colorado and Owens Corning's hub for a seven-state region — would cease for up to two years and throw up to 100 people out of work. The cost could reach $100 million, they said.

In late June, RTD officials said they had designed the facility in such a way as to spare Owens Corning's factory. But the district will take property now used for employee parking and inventory storage. The company is reviewing the proposal, and a meeting with RTD was scheduled for this week.

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